


Family Ties

by Bodldops



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Jemma is a master planner, Not so good on the improv though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-12
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:26:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4330266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bodldops/pseuds/Bodldops
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Jemma Simmons wasn't recruited into SHIELD simply because of her brilliance?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Ties

Jemma Annamarie Simmons always knew she was special.

She was the girl with _two_ dads. Most people only knew about one of them.

That was the one that lived with her mum, of course. He was fine, better than fine - if she only had one, she'd be quite happy with him. He did the normal dad things, or what passed as normal dad things in the Simmons household. He helped set up her first chemistry set, helped her write up the findings of her first experiment, and held her hand during the trip to the hospital after her first chemistry set exploded. He was the one who was there for birthdays and holidays and Christmases. 

But Jemma knew that there was another dad, the one that didn't marry her mum but did the sorts of things dads do with mums to make little girls. Her mum didn't know it, but Jemma had found the hidden shoebox under the bed a long time ago, and had read every letter contained within. Her dad's last name was Barton she learns from a scrap of an envelope that was left tucked between the flaps of cardboard. She could have been Jemma Annamarie Barton... which would spell JAB, and probably wouldn't be that much fun, but... 

She wonders, sometimes.

But she lives in England, and from what she can tell, her dad is American, and was a soldier, an Army Ranger. The letters contain odd jargon that sounds like things she'd hear on the telly from American shows, lots of snippets of daily life in the military. He's careful, he never really says anything about what he does, but she supposes you're not really supposed to say to just _anyone_. All of the letters are old - the last one is postdated more than a few months before she was born, before her mum married the dad everyone knows about. She'd decided to leave it at that. After all, he probably didn't even know about her... or did, and didn't want to know anything about her. Either way, hardly encouraging. Besides, there were so many other things to learn. At first Chemistry had seemed like the end-all-be-all, but then she learned how chemistry made things work and Biology was just the logical step up from there but then there was Archeology because things had been going on for a very long time and Physics because everything had rules not just molecules... so she had to get on with her goal of studying pretty much anything anyone would teach her.

And then one day, she found him again. She had a research project, in history. Actually, she knew it was less of a project for her and more of a way to keep her out of the classroom for a bit. It really wasn't her fault she knew the answer to the questions, and Tommy Calders was a big bully anyway and shouldn't have called her names for it. She feels that she shouldn't have been the one separated out after the subsequent fight, but she really doesn't mind being alone in the library, and searching through old papers was fun. And that's when she found him. The records of American army soldiers stationed near her home town were _right there_ , next to the microfilm machines she'd been using to search old newspapers.

It took her a few hours, but there were only two Bartons listed, and one was in his fifties at the time. Clint Francis Barton - now she has a name. And with it, a picture, one that she carefully copies and replaces back in its file. It's all she expects she'll ever find of her secret dad, and she tucks her copy into her notebook so it will be safe. She takes it out from time to time - to see if she can spot any signs of him in her own face, to try and imagine what he'd look like now, to tell him about her troubles when she manages to get on the bad side of both of her parents at the same time.

Time goes by. Jemma is still the girl with a secret dad, and life goes on. She is moved to a private academy (it's a boarding school, lets be honest, and she prefers to believe that she's going to it for its rigorous scholastic schedule rather than how it keeps her out of the Simmons household). It keeps her busy - at least now she isn't so painfully ahead of her class. 

Technology comes slowly to her world (the headmistress doesn't agree with it, but time marches on, and at least some of the parents insist). Jemma is ahead of her classes again, and has taken to hiding in the rarely-used computer lab... turns out even amongst more intellectual peers her particular drive isn't appreciated. It's a bit dull in there (there's only so many times you can play Oregon Trail)... and then Google comes out with Google Earth. Suddenly, she can see places all across the world, snippets of lives she'd otherwise never see. Jemma is _fascinated_ , dealing with the long loading times of the new program to see other places, other faces. She spots pyramids and towers, sees sunrises on shores she's never visited. Almost more interesting, there's people in the pictures. People on the side of the road watching curiously, or going about their business. Every day people, doing every day things.

That's when she finds him again. She's investigating New York City, with the vague idea of transferring to an American university instead of waiting to be old enough to go to something closer to home. Maybe Cornell, maybe Columbia... and there he is, coming out of a building. He's older, and the picture is grainy, but she's pretty sure it's him - her other dad.

She prints this picture out, to keep along with the now well-handled snapshot she found years ago.

Jemma searches the streets of NYC by computer for days that stretch to weeks, months. It looks like she's not going to find him again when she spots him coming up the stairs from the mass transit.

Her dad is from New York City. Or somewhere close, at least, able to be there frequently enough that he shows up amongst the multitudes of people living in that one city _twice_ , something that the odds are strongly against. 

That's when she gets the Idea. It's one that she dismisses a half-dozen times before it finally takes root. The idea that maybe, just maybe, her secret dad would like to have a secret daughter. She wants to know if she gets her taste for jellybeans from him, and if he likes snakes too, and if he's as curious about the world as she is. 

Carefully she begins amassing information about New York City. She learns about the trains and the cabs, ferries and bus schedules, places to stay with a limited budget and places to avoid. She's never excelled at impromptu work, but she is absolutely brilliant at planning. Her teachers breathe a sigh of relief as she relents in bringing outside research into class, questioning everything and debating minutiae into the ground. They'd be less relieved if they knew what she was planning. 

Her biggest obstacle, other than the actual searching of the city, will be getting to America in the first place. Of course she has a passport, but it's at home, the one she sees on breaks and at holidays and on some rare weekends. She suspects that the layers of officialdom between here and her destination won't be too terribly impressed by a teenager travelling alone, and if she's caught and returned to where she's supposed to be it's highly unlikely she will get another chance at this.

So she searches. Study abroad trips, competitions, paper presentations - while the Simmons might be willing to have their painfully precocious daughter study and live somewhere other than their house, they're hardly likely to let her head off to another continent on a whim. She has to earn her way there.

She discovers her ticket across by chance, despite her intensive research - a poster is put up in one of the student lounges, and it's only the fact that it's regarding a summer study program by an American university that catches her attention. Both the college and the location - Georgetown in Washington D.C. - make her think more liberal arts and politics than anything in the sciences, and no one is going to believe that _she'd_ abandon her first love for something like politics. However, they also offer a forensic science course.

Now _that_ sounds interesting. And plausible.

The paperwork is submitted to the headmistress' office the next morning.


End file.
